Hour-long private coaching sessions cost anywhere from $50 on the low end to upwards of $200. For a 12-year-old youth basketball player, that investment can quickly become an unbearable financial burden. Access to higher-level coaches, like an AAU or high school coach, is impossible for some, too.

The traditional coaching model might not be broken and now with the use of technology in the sport at an all-time high, what better way to target a younger demographic than with the advent of a digital coach in the form of a sensor basketball and coaching app.

For the last five-plus years, Mike Crowley — CEO of InfoMotion Sports Technologies — has created different censored ball products and with the feedback he has received from coachers, players and parents, he recently developed the 94Fifty Smart Sensor Basketball, the company’s first product.

“One of the biggest problems we heard consistently from coaches was that kids weren’t listening to them anymore without some kind of factual, objective data,” Crowley said. “Kids just don’t want to listen to opinion anymore. They want you to prove it to them, and they want it proved right now. They want the result right now.”

The digital world arrived about 10 years ago, and according to Crowley, younger players needed a different experience in order to learn some of the fundamentals of dribbling, shooting and ball handling.

“It’s almost like an assistant coach,” Crowley said of the 94Fifty Smart Sensor Basketball. “What it does is to reinforce everything coaches have been telling the player, sometimes for even a couple of years, but 94Fifty measures the players skills and instantly reports those skills back through app. That objective data immediately gets the player to listen. The factual data is there in front of them, and it’s in a form that they like. Now, they’re ready to learn and take instruction, and it’s really fast when that happens.

“The coach can explain and teach, and 94Fifty correlates that player’s motion into something that is actionable. So, when the player goes off and works on their own, now they know what the coach wants them to do and they can practice it perfectly every time. It’s a standing compliment to a coach.”

Through data collected over the past few years, the 94Fifty Basketball and app know what a beginner can do on the hardwood versus a more advanced player. The technology assists users in developing muscle memory so that they can consistently replicate their performance in practice and during actual game settings.

With 50-plus programmed workouts, drills and competitions, players can complete workouts and achieve certain levels of performance, which the app then tracks and records. From shot arc and backspin to dribbling force, the app is designed to find that stubborn habit that every player possesses and fix it.

“The app doesn’t care how old you are. It just taps into where you are at with your muscle memory,” Crowley said. “If you’re at a very precise, high level, it is still going to find a weakness. It lets you focus on that one thing. … Muscle memory response — it’s how humans are built. Your mind is looking to find something to tell your body what to do. We tap into that, so that the more you do something the correct way, the more your muscle memory response starts to understand what it is supposed to do.”

Compared to personalized lessons or basketball camps that run hundreds of dollars, it looks as though the 94Fifty Basketball is a worthy purchase. The one-time buy of $249 on Amazon or East Bay translates to about $0.40 a day/investement for the life of the ball.

“You won’t find anything out there that is as complete in terms of the whole game, the whole digital coaching experience,” Crowley added.

Mark Burns is a contributor on sports business for Sporting News. He is currently a third year law student at Belmont University. Follow Mark on Twitter @MarkJBurns88.